


Shine On Me Again

by scribefindegil



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, The Power Of Mabel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 14:34:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7761655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribefindegil/pseuds/scribefindegil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Candy and Grenda notice that Mabel doesn't seem quite her usual self. They cheer her up with illicit popcorn, untested computer programs, and heart-to-hearts.</p>
<p>(Bonus chapter of Fisherman's Knot for The Power of Mabel Week)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shine On Me Again

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in the same continuity as my fic "Fisherman's Knot," between the events of Chapters 4 and 8, but you don't need to have read that fic to understand this. Just know that Stan has been struggling with depression and Mabel is worried about him.

From several hundred miles and a state line apart, two houses echoed with unearthly shrieks.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Mabel screamed, flailing her arms at the computer screen. "Girls! I miss you so much!"

"We miss you too!" Candy replied. "Are you sure we cannot kidnap you back to Gravity Falls? Just say the word and I will send a robot!"

Mabel sighed deeply. "It _is_ tempting, but you know everything here would fall apart without me."

The other two girls nodded sagely. They were sprawled on Grenda's bed, with the laptop duct-taped to the footboard for ideal viewing positions.

"And!" Mabel continued, "We're only, like, three and a half months away from summer!"

"Yay!" Candy shouted, while Grenda began to chant, "SUM-MER! SUM-MER!" and bang on the bed with her fists.

"We will have all of the adventures!" said Candy.

"And all of the hugs!" Mabel added. "Nobody here squeezes hard enough. I'm languishing in a desert of hug deprivation."

"Hmm . . ." Candy stroked her chin. "Maybe I can build you a hug robot. I will talk to Mr. McGucket next time I go to the mansion!"

Mabel laughed. “Nah, I’ll just wait and get proper hugs from my best girls! I know any robot you made would be AMAAAAAZING, but it wouldn’t be nearly as great as you!”

"Okay!" Grenda shouted. "Now who's ready to watch some hunky TV boys make bad decisions!"

"Me! Me! Me!" the other two yelled, waving their hands in the air.

Grenda leaned in to the screen, frowning as she called up the video and pressed Play. A shower of animated roses and pentagrams covered the screen, then dissolved to reveal a brooding green-haired young man. He swished his cloak over the camera and the theme song to "Dreamboat Monster Club" began to blast out of the speakers.

"These werewolves are so unrealistic," said Candy, once the opening credits were over.

"Yeah!" Grenda added. "They really should lose all their clothes when they transform! Wink!"

Candy shuddered. "Do not remind me. Next time we set a werewolf trap there will be a pair of shorts in it. Did we tell you that Soos was right about the mailman, Mabel?”

Mabel didn’t respond. She looked lost in thought, staring somewhere past the computer screen with her chin in her hands.

Candy tried again. “. . . Mabel?"

“Hmm? Oh yeah, Soos told me.”

Candy frowned. “Mabel, are you all right? You did not even sing the theme song!”

Mabel flapped her hands dismissively at the screen. “I’m fine! Don’t you worry about me. Everything’s . . . fine.”

“Nuh-uh!” Grenda paused the show and blew Mabel’s video window up to full screen. “We’re not letting our best friend be sad! What happened? Was someone mean to you? Is there a boy we need to punch?!”

Mabel shook her head miserably. “No, no . . . nothing like that. It’s just . . . I promised I wouldn’t talk about it anyway . . .”

Candy and Grenda shared a brief sidelong look. There was only one way to respond to something like this. “TELL US! TELL US! TELL US!” they chorused.

The chant had always worked before, but Mabel bit her lip and looked away. “Can we just watch the thing?” she asked quietly. “I kinda don’t want to think about it right now. Hot but poorly researched monster boys are a good distraction. And so are friends.”

Grenda looked at Candy and shrugged. “Okay, but you promise to tell us if anyone needs punching!”

Mabel’s smile was small but genuine. “Promise!”

“Also!” Candy added, “If we are paused that means it is time for a snack break! Popcorn and sprinkle frosting for all!”

“Yeah!” Grenda yelled.

Mabel nodded. “Okay. I need to figure out where Mom and Dad hid the popcorn, though. They say I ‘shouldn’t eat it’ because it will ‘ruin my braces.’”

Candy gasped. “Popcorn deprivation! This is a dark day.”

Mabel shrugged. “It’s like a treasure hunt for forbidden snacks! It’s cool. Don’t worry about it.”

*

Downstairs in Grenda’s kitchen, safely out of earshot of the microphone, Grenda clasped her friend’s shoulders. “What are we gonna do, Candy? Mabel needs cheering up but she’s all the way in California!”

Candy shook her head. “We will find out what is bothering her,” she said, “But I am afraid it might take a while. If we had not already promised Dipper not to spy on their house, I could send a surveillance drone, but Mr. McGucket says he cannot bail me out if the Air Force comes to investigate again.”

“Well at least we can send her some popcorn!” said Grenda, tossing two bags into the microwave. “What else are people with braces not supposed to eat?”

“Hmm. Sticky things. Crunchy things. We will go on a secret candy aisle mission!”

“Yeah!”

Candy paced back and forth across the kitchen floor. “And we can disguise them with packages from other foods so her parents do not know!”

Grenda smashed her fist down on the stainless-steel countertop, leaving a dent. “Yes!”

*

“Thanks for hanging out with me, girls,” said Mabel as the credits rolled on the season finale. “I know I wasn’t exactly my normal delightful self.”

“What! You’re always delightful!”

Mabel smiled a little. “Thanks, Grenda. So are you.”

“We will do this again very soon, yes?” said Candy.

Mabel nodded. “Super soon. The soonest.”

*

Candy slumped across her desk and dug her knuckles into her eyes. Sure, rescuing Pacifica from that demon horse had been necessary, and sure, when they were done it was late enough that going to Greasy’s so they could all eat something seemed like a good plan, but now it was 3am and she was tired and cranky and her hair was full of pond slime despite the three showers she’d taken, and to top it all off her history project still wasn’t done.

“I am doomed,” she said aloud to the blinking cursor—still two pages short.

Then, in the corner of the screen, there was a flash of green. “ **GLITTERSPACEPIG is online** ” said the notification. That was unusual. For someone as distractible as Mabel, she usually managed to get a full night’s sleep. At least, it happened often enough for her to be smug about it.

As Candy considered whether or not to engage with the other distraction that Fate had clearly dropped into her lap, a message bubble appeared.

**GLITTERSPACEPIG:** hey

Candy blinked and readjusted her glasses. No, she had read it right the first time. Not one single exclamation mark. This was an emergency; homework could wait.

**CandyGurl42:** hey!

**GLITTERSPACEPIG:** i didnt know if you were awake

**CandyGurl42:** i am! how are u?

Candy watched the three dots in the chat window appear and reappear as Mabel typed. After at least a full minute of waiting, she got a response.

**GLITTERSPACEPIG:** can we not talk about that. can you just talk to me. tell me nice things.

**CandyGurl42:** of course!!

**CandyGurl42:** i will send u internet cats!!

It took an hour, but by the time Candy had regaled her friend with the tale of how Pacifica had ended the day covered from head to toe in lake slime and sent links to at least two dozen of the cutest kittens she could find, Mabel was typing like herself again.

*

“You leave your computer on during the night, don’t you?” Candy asked at school the next day.

Grenda nodded. “Yeah . . .” She had to admit that Candy looked a little like a lake monster, and not the cute kind. There were bits of green clinging to her hair, and she had truly impressive bags under her eyes. The huge mug of coffee she was holding didn’t exactly help matters.

“I am coming to your house tonight!”

“For, like, napping, or . . . ?”

“To instate emergency protocols!” Candy yelled. She slammed her mug down, spraying coffee all over the table. “. . . Maybe also for napping. How are you so awake?”

Grenda shrugged. “I just got Marius to pay one of his tutors to write my essay for me. He knows I need my beauty sleep.”

Candy blinked.

“I can probably get one to do your work next time!” Grenda added, cheerfully clapping her friend on the back.

“Hmm.” Candy considered. “That does sound tempting . . . but we will talk about it later! First we need to help Mabel!”

“Oh no! Is she in trouble! Did someone hurt her? If someone hurt her I’ll kill them! Marius can be my alibi.”

“No! Well . . . I do not know. Right now, she needs emotional support and cute photos! We can always arrange a murder later.”

“All right!” Grenda slapped a fist into her hand. “What’s the plan?”

“Well!” Candy pulled out her laptop. It had some interesting customizations from the time she spent up at the manor with McGucket, and Grenda was sure that someday the flamethrower was going to go off at school. That would be fun.

“She was awake last night, and she was very sad. I am afraid she might be having bad dreams. So I made this program! We turn it on when we go to bed, and then if Mabel comes on—” Candy pressed a button and the laptop let out an unearthly screech. “It will wake us up so she will not have to be alone!”

“That’s a great idea, Candy!” Grenda looked around at the cafeteria full of people staring at them in horror. Maybe the alarm was a little much for some of their classmates.

Her heart sunk as she watched Pacifica stand up from the popular table, smirking at her friends as she sauntered over. She’d done a much better job than Candy had at getting the lake slime out of her hair.

“Hey, dorks,” she said, loud enough that the whole room could hear. “What’s that, your new boyfriend?”

As the room erupted in nervous laughter, Pacifica leaned down and slid a sleek, hot-pink laptop onto the table. “I heard you talking. Not that I had a choice, you sound like a football announcer. Anyway, you’re putting that thing on my computer.”

“. . . Why?” Candy asked after a pause.

Pacifica rolled her eyes. “Because this whole town worships the Pines family and if Mabel shows up here next summer all depressed I’m sure they’ll find a way to blame me for it. Oh,” she added as she turned away, “And my family has a lot of experience covering things up, so if you do have to take someone out, call me. I can’t do anything about Mabel’s taste but I know she’d just pout more if you got arrested.”

They watched her walk away.

“I am not sure her reasoning is very sound,” said Candy.

“Who cares!” said Grenda. “We can wake her up with doom bells!”

Candy nodded. “Yes, yes . . . you are wise.”

*

The alarms didn’t go off every night. It was only once or twice a week, but that was enough to make Candy grateful that they’d installed them. Sometimes Mabel seemed to be her usual self, and they’d trade cute animal pictures and craft tutorials for a while before heading back to bed. Sometimes it was like the first time, where Mabel didn’t talk much or use punctuation.

One time, it was worse.

It had been a while since they first set things up, since Mabel had sent them photos of her grinning from ear to ear as she held up boxes of stealthily-wrapped popcorn and taffy, since Pacifica had shown up at Candy’s house in sunglasses and a trenchcoat to reclaim her laptop.

It was 4:37am on a Thursday when the alarm rang. Grenda was sleeping over, and they’d flipped a coin over who had to wake up if the notification went off. Candy had lost. She rolled over in bed with a groan and blearily opened her computer. “Hey girl!” she typed.

Mabel didn’t respond for so long that Candy began to think the computer might have signed her on accidentally. She was nodding off again when finally the notification bubble dinged at her and made her sit up with a jolt.

**GLITTERSPACEPIG:** im scared.

Candy bit her lip.

**CandyGurl42:** of what? do u need us to go put the LOSER shirt back on the demon statue?

**GLITTERSPACEPIG:** no. not that.

Candy waited another minute, unsure of how to respond. The computer dinged again.

**GLITTERSPACEPIG:** call?

**CandyGurl42:** of course!

Candy poked at Grenda’s sleeping bag with her foot. “Hey! Wake up!” she hissed.

“Mmflempph,” said Grenda.

“Mabel needs us!”

“Mmmrromp!”

Slowly, Grenda sat up. Candy slipped down on the floor next to her and balanced the laptop in between them.

She pressed the “Call” button.

It took longer than usual to connect. Mabel was in what might be a closet—at least there were piles of sweaters around her—with the only light coming from the laptop screen. She looked like she’d been crying.

“Hey,” she said weakly. “Sorry I’m kind of a mess . . .”

“There is no need to be sorry!” said Candy.

“Yeah!” said Grenda. “Look, we’re messes too! Blaaahh!”

She and Candy slumped against each other, making the weirdest faces they could and doing tired jazz hands at the camera.

Mabel giggled. “Okay . . .”

“Now,” said Candy. “What is wrong?”

“Tell us your troubles!” added Grenda.

The smile vanished from Mabel’s face. She wrung her hands, playing with the sleeves of her sweater.

“It’s . . .” she began. “I mean, it’s not _my_ troubles, that’s the thing. I mean, it is, because how am I supposed to be happy if someone else is sad? But the sad is still their problem, not mine. That’s what Dipper keeps saying but I don’t think he really believes it either, but I don’t know how to do anything for me if I can’t do anything for him, and—”

“So Dipper is the sad one?”

Mabel shook her head. “He has too-scared-to-leave-the-house days, but they’re getting better. And I can help with those—I can’t fix them but I can make them better, and that’s kind of okay.”

“So who are you talking about?”

Mabel sighed. “It’s Grunkle Stan. He’s . . . he’s really sad and he’s far away and I can’t help him and I just feel so useless.”

“Is his brother being mean to him again?” asked Candy.

Mabel shook her head. “That’s the thing. Nothing’s _wrong_. He’s just sick. His brain is sick and it won’t let him be happy and I hate it.”

Candy remembered being small and going to the Mystery Shack, seeing the way Mr. Mystery’s smile fell away when he thought no one was looking. “He has been like that for a long time, I think,” she said.

Mabel waved her hands. “Yeah, but before he had all kinds of bad junk going on! Before he didn’t have _me_! I’m supposed to be able to help! I sent him glitter but I don’t know if it’s doing anything and he doesn’t want to talk to us in case it makes us worry but when I can’t talk to him I just worry more! And I can tell that Grunkle Ford is pretending things are better than they are because he doesn’t want us to worry either. He’s not as good at lying as he thinks he is.”

“Mabel . . .” said Candy, “I am sorry . . .”

“See!” Mabel pointed at the screen. “Now I’m making _you_ sad too! It’s awful! I just want everyone I love to be happy forever!”

She flopped onto the pile of sweaters.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tried to talk about it.”

“Yes you should!” Grenda objected. “Now we know, and we can try to help you, and then you can have energy to help other people!”

“Exactly!” added Candy. “It will be a cycle of love!”

From her nest of sweaters, Mabel smiled. “Thanks,” she said.

“OF LOVE!” Grenda shouted, in case Mabel hadn’t gotten the message. All three of them winced as the noise overloaded the speakers and a screech of static echoed back and forth.

“Oops,” said Grenda. She didn’t sound very apologetic.

Mabel stiffened as the closet door creaked open. Candy and Grenda heard Dipper mumble, “Mabel, what . . . ?”

“Um,” said Mabel. “Hi.”

Dipper sat down in the pile of sweaters. “Bad dream again.”

Mabel nodded.

“Why didn’t you wake me up, knucklehead?”

“Didn’t want to worry you,” Mabel mumbled.

Dipper sighed. “And what do you say when I give you that excuse?”

Mabel hung her head. “That I’m being a stupid-face.”

“Yeah, well, right back at you.” He finally seemed to notice Candy and Grenda and waved awkwardly. “Oh. Hey . . .”

“Hey,” said Grenda.

“’Sup,” said Candy.

Dipper looked around. “So, there, uh, room in this sweater pile for one more?”

Mabel tackle-hugged him, and he let out a small kitten-like squawk as he fell over. Candy could hear him muttering, “Hey, it’s okay.”

“Give your sister extra hugs from us!” she called.

“I will, I will,” Dipper replied. “No worries. Just gotta . . . Mabel, we need to sit up.”

“Nope,” came a muffled voice from the pile of wool. “We live here now. Sweater Town and Hug Town are having a merger.”

“Okay, well . . .” After a moment Dipper managed to excavate his arms enough to wrap them around Mabel. “So here’s a hug from Candy, and here’s one from Grenda.”

“Pfft,” said Mabel. “You can’t give me a Grenda hug with those noodle arms.”

“Oh yeah? Watch me.”

Candy couldn’t really see what was going on, but she heard Mabel giggle, and eventually the two of them emerged from the sweaters.

“That was _maybe_ a quarter of a Grenda hug,” she said.

Dipper shrugged. “I’ll take it. Now, what’s up?”

The smile vanished from Mabel’s face in an instant. She snuggled down into the sweater mound.

“I don’t know how to help Grunkle Stan,” she said.

Dipper packed more sweaters around her. “You are helping.”

“How do you know?”

Dipper draped a sweater over his sister’s head. “Because he said so, doofus.”

“But what if it’s not enough! What if he . . . does a bad thing. And it’s my fault because I couldn’t make him happy!”

“Listen,” said Candy, “I do not know what is going on, but someone else doing bad things is not your fault.”

“Yeah!” added Grenda. “My mom always says she’s not responsible for my choices! So you’re not responsible for his!”

“But I help people,” said Mabel with a sigh. “It’s my thing. And . . . I worry about him a lot, but not all the time, and what if something happens when I’m not worrying? And there’s not a thing I can _do_ because it’s all brain junk. If it was a monster he was fighting then we could fight it too, and if it was the regular kind of sick we could go on an epic quest to find a cure, and if it was a person we could just do the Communication Dance until they fixed things. But it’s none of that, and so there’s nothing I can do!”

“You cannot fix everything,” said Candy. “But you can help. And we can help you. Aren’t we making you feel a little better?”

Mabel nodded.

“You see! We cannot fix everything, but just because we cannot fix it does not mean we are not helping. Helping a little is a lot better than doing nothing, I think.”

Mabel nodded again. “I just . . . I didn’t know if you would want to spend time with me if I’m all sad and worried.”

Grenda blew a raspberry at the screen, and Candy joined her. Mabel ducked her head to hide the smile that was creeping across her face.

“Come on, Mabel!” Grenda shouted. “You’re like, our favorite person in the world! And you’re still our favorite person even when you’re sad and worried!”

“Yes!” Candy chimed in. “We know you will be there for us if we are sad, so why should we be different?”

“Yeah!” said Grenda.

Mabel reached out her hands like she could hug them through the screen. “Thanks, girls,” she said. “You’re the greatest.”

“Uh-uh! You’re the greatest!”

Mabel blushed, and when Dipper elbowed her and said, “Hey, listen to your friends, doofus,” she blushed even more.

“So,” said Candy. “What do you want to do next? You can tell us more about your problems, or if you want we can just watch something and not talk about it right now.

“I think . . .” said Mabel. “Right now I kinda want a distraction.”

Candy could tell that Dipper was really concerned, because he didn’t object at all when Grenda suggested they all watch an episode of "Dreamboat Monster Club”. He didn’t even comment for the first ten minutes, though she could see him getting more and more twitchy.

Finally he snapped, “Come on! If you want to keep vampires out, don’t put a giant “WELCOME” mat at every door of your castle!”

He froze, glancing over nervously at Mabel, but she just smiled and ruffled his hair. “Candy’s got a theory about that,” she said. “C’mon, Candy, tell him.”

Candy launched into her theory, and then Mabel suggested a sillier one, and before too long they were all laughing and trying to come up with the least likely plot scenarios they could.

Then the loud, peppy strains of “Disco Girl” began to blast from Dipper’s phone.

“Oh, crap!” he said, fumbling to silence it. “It’s six thirty! We’ve gotta get ready for school!”

“Don’t wanna,” Mabel whined. “Sleep time.”

Candy pursed her lips and looked through the list of programs she’d ‘borrowed’ from McGucket in case they came in handy at some point. A-ha . . .

“Do not worry about it!” she said. “Mabel is right! It is sleep time.”

Dipper narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing?”

Candy grinned. “Nothing! Nothing at all! But you will not have school, I promise.”

Dipper probably would have protested more had Candy not chosen that moment to press the button that cut off power to Mabel’s laptop, and, incidentally, the entire town of Piedmont.

*

“And now we take the factor of the left side of the equation, which will let us solve for our two values of X . . .”

Candy’s phone buzzed in her pocket, jolting her back into alertness. She stole a quick glance around, but Mr. Jones kept droning on with no sign he’d noticed the interruption. No one was supposed to have cell phones in class, but she was a rebel.

It had been so, so tempting to use the blackout program on Gravity Falls as well, but they decided that two instances in the same day would probably get the government to show up again, and might even get Mr. McGucket in trouble since it was his program. So they’d loaded up on coffee and an approximation of Mabel Juice that never seemed to work as well as the real thing and blundered into school.

Candy slid the phone under her desk and swiped it open. There was one message from Dipper. She clicked to open it.

“Just got service back,” it said. “Thanks.” And there was a picture. It was blurry, and cut off on one corner by Dipper’s thumb, but it showed the two of them curled up in the nest of sweaters. Waddles had joined them at some point, and Mabel’s head was resting on the pig’s back, her arms wrapped around him. She was smiling.


End file.
